When Dominique Dawes competed in the Olympic trials for the 1992 Barcelona Games, she was the first Black gymnast to ever qualify.
Three decades later, 80% of the U.S. women’s Olympic gymnastics team competing in Paris are women of color, making it the most racially diverse in the team’s history.
“To see now, 32 years later, women of color dominating the sport of gymnastics definitely gives me reason to at least know that the sport is becoming a little bit more inclusive,” Dawes said.
She went on to compete in three consecutive Olympic Games and win four Olympic medals, including a historic team gold medal with the “Magnificent Seven” at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
The financial and social hurdles that have long shut out Black athletes from gymnastics are beginning to come down. And now, women of color occupy gymnastics’ rarest air.
At last year’s world championships, three Black women took all three spots on the all-around podium: Simone Biles, Rebeca Andrade of Brazil and Shilese Jones. The last three Olympic all-around gold medalists — Suni Lee, Biles and Gabby Douglas — have all been American women of color, with Douglas becoming the first Black gymnast to win the event at the 2012 London Olympics.
This year, Black women made up a third of the U.S. senior women’s national team, and in 2022, Black women swept the all-around medals at the U.S. Gymnastics Championships.
Tokyo Olympic silver medalist Jordan Chiles was the national bronze medalist in 2022 and will represent Team USA in Paris, but she said she nearly quit the sport over racism she faced along the way.
“I wanted to be done, because I didn’t think … the sport wanted me,” Chiles said on NBC’s “My New Favorite Olympian” podcast. “I didn’t think people around me wanted to see this beautiful Black girl in a [leotard] anymore.”
Chiles not only delivers clutch routines on the competition floor, but also is an enthusiastic cheerleader for her teammates and competitors.
“I’ll be the hype woman like I always am,” Chiles said at the Olympic trials in Minneapolis, where she could be seen running from one corner of the arena to another to cheer on her competitors. She often channels her own personal hype woman, Beyoncé, who inspired Chiles’ floor routine and her U.S. Championships leotard.
“If she’s a queen, I’m a queen,” she said of the 32-time Grammy winner.
Having made her senior elite debut in 2017, Chiles attributes her longevity in the sport to athletes like Dawes and Biles, who is her training mate at World Champions Centre in Spring, Texas.
When Biles salutes the Olympic judges in Paris later this month, she will become the first female U.S. gymnast since Dawes to compete at three Olympic Games. At 27, Biles will also be the oldest female gymnast to represent the U.S. at the Olympics in 72 years.
Dawes said she admires the cultural evolution the sport has experienced since she retired and praised the balance and “control” today’s athletes have over their training.
“The fact that I was 23 at my last Olympic Games in 2000 was unheard of back then,” Dawes said. “But today, I love the fact that the longevity has extended beyond what I was able to accomplish.”
The advice she would impart on Biles? “Enjoy the journey.”
With each Olympic Games she attended, Dawes recalls the Olympic spotlight growing brighter, a source of stress that was only compounded by the sport’s lack of diversity at the time.
“I understood the magnitude behind what it was about,” she said. “You’re not only representing your country, but I was also representing my race.”
As a professional athlete, her livelihood had also become inextricably intertwined with her performance at the Olympics.
While she was able to withstand the enormity of the pressure and has since achieved icon status in the sport, Dawes said she would not allow her four children — ages 10, 8 and 6-year-old twins — to compete in elite gymnastics.
“I want them to have a balanced childhood,” Dawes said. “I focus on happy, healthy kids. … I will not allow my kids to go through what I went through, but it was right for me.”
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